Essay by Gracie Amburn.
Memorials are crafted in an extremely intentional manner. Content, composition, placement, functionality- no effective memorial or monument can be reared without careful consideration of every element surrounding it. Choices must be made — symbolism or realism, stone or metal, here or there, for example — that require an innate nature of activation in memorials.
What this activation calls upon is dependent entirely on the monument itself. In many cases, it is memory that finds itself evoked in, and note the word, memorials. But perhaps this isn’t true in every case. Consider instead memorials that seek to evoke no memory — perhaps even un-memory — in the viewer’s experience; most notable here may be the eruption of memorials at the hands of perpetrators by which caused the events of commemoration. Such monuments oft seek not to bring forth memory but to dull it.
Many of these feel like, and perhaps are, pacifiers for those demanding recognition and justice, a “Here, take this! Are you happy now?”
But what good are scraps of metal to the dead? What good is talk with no walk, faith with no works? Can an objectively good memorial serve its “intended” purpose despite the motive behind its creation?
Perhaps it can. And this is not to say that the dead do not deserve memorials, or recognition, or justice, even if it is fabricated.
But what humanity- change- can a memorial bring to the world when someone without a home sleeps beside it, for the rock is warmer than the grass? Across the memorial garden, which is protected and funded by the government, lies a row of tents along the river. It is raining, and cold, and a garden in memoriam of those that died at the hands of their government is better off than those alive under the same government.
How easy it must be to care for the dead and ignore the living, for the dead are much more popular.
Perhaps memorials are like this — faith without works — and mean nothing without change flowing out with them. Some people only receive flowers at their funeral. The dead are easy to memorialize; perhaps we should focus on preventing the need for more monuments rather than construct them before due time.
And that may mean more to the dead than scraps of metal.